Mainau, Rheinfalls, Food and a little on muenster.

ok.. this post is going to be super super long. cos i'm combining my trip to Mainau, trip to Rheinfalls and some food issue together. they were supposed to be posted last week, but due to unforseen circumstances, they are only making their debut now. anyway, here u go!

went to mainau with xiaowen cos i had two Gutscheine(vouchers). this is what greets u when u enter..

they had a playground for kids. and let me say. this is what i call a play ground. singapore playgrounds cannot compare to it at all.. what is it with rubber grounds. where got fun?!

and of course, i had to give it a try

besides, i'm still 20 only.

after which, we saw this. doesn't seem very impressive does it?

wait till u see how big it is!

Anyway, Mainau is meant to be a flower paradise every year during Summer. Yes.. but we went in Autumn! so here u go. a series of before and after shots. Credits of Before-shots to Lina, my housemate.

stairs garden (before)

stairs garden (after)

garden from top (before)

garden from top (after)

pretty fountain (before)

pretty fountain (after)

and here are just a few more shots we took in Mainau

little animal farm

hee hee.. i tried to hold on to time

a pretty, little, colourful bird


ok.. enough of Mainau. Let's move on..

Shiyao came over on Friday. and to welcome him, i made chicken rice. here's the ingredients.

and here's the end product:
chicken rice for three!!

it wasn't that bad considering it was my first attempt. i just forgot to fry the rice before cooking them cos i was rushing to the train station to pick shiyao up.nevertheless, i'm glad my guests liked my cooking!

after dinner, we had a long long debate with ziming an siwei over our plans for the weekend. in the end, we decided we'll go to Rheinfalls. We had to take a train to Schaffhausen, SWITZERLAND. yes. must caps Switzerland. cos stupid me forgot that it is in Switzerland. When xiaowen asked me if we need to bring our passports, i happily told her, no need lah! In the end, suay-ness hit us and we were checked by the customs. "Sorry, no passports, u can go back to Konstanz and get it." and they made us re-board the train. LUCKILY, Schaffhausen is only 45 mins away. we returned in 3 hours..

the customs office which we were 'invited' into.

well, it was ok to go back to Konstanz to get our passports altho i felt really stupid. but the most pek chek thing is that upon returning, the custom officers were not ard! so we didn't get checked! urgh... but that did not spoil our mood... we went crazy taking stupid pics.



shiyao loved the colourful swiss train

anyway, we were finally on our way. it took us 50 mins to walk from the schaffhausen bahnhof(train station) to the Falls. of course, we had to entertain ourselves on the way.

mother n kid

xiaowen tried to murder me

shiyao kena stun

grafitti monster ate me

we saw some pretty swans in the lake, and shiyao went down to take photos with them. here, u see the amazing thing called 自拍. (self-photography)

in an hour, we finally made it to the falls. here's a sneak peak of falls from behind.

we made a small break before continuing our journey to get closer to the falls. introduced shiyao to xiaowen n my favourite biscuits. he seriously loved it.

and of course, so did xiaowen and i.

after that, we took a small trip on a little boat and went crazy taking photos again. here's a nice one we took together.

we ended up on the other side of the bank after the boat ride.. and took more pics!! they all looked photoshop-ed. but i swear they are real!!!






yeah. that is Rheinfalls for you! Europe's largest waterfalls. and to end our trip, i have this pic for u.

tabletennis in action! can u spot the ball?!?!


Upon arriving in Konstanz, we went to wonderful Kaufland(German NTUC) and bought ingredients for Rostii!!! i had two assistants!

cheng xiaowen

and chin shiyao

don't think that i'm that mean to make my guests work. i was cooking!

without me, there won't be this. (hahaha... so 不要脸 right?)

but at least, we were all happy!!!

and since we decided to stay in Konstanz on sunday, i had to have my usual Sunday breakfast. Since my arrival, i made American Breakfast on every Sunday morning. I will sit at the balcony and read my book, enjoy the scenery, my coffee and the slowness of time. it's what i call Relaxing. i can nv do that in singapore

Anyway, i decided to prep the same thing for xiaowen and shiyao too! and we were lucky that the weather was good. it wasn't too cold, so we could sit outside for breakfast.

ingredients for breakfast

the end product

and my satisfied guests.



yup yup! this brings me to the end of my overdue post.

last weekend was spent in Münster with xiaowen's host. we took a 7 hour train ride from konstanz to Münster and were welcomed by her host, Frau Sagemann. she preparing to cook fried noodles, but was not very sure how to do so. so i helped her along.. it was shiokness cos i very long never eat char mee already.

it was so nice to walk along the streets of Münster and reminisce the times we spent there last year. the streets, the cathedral, the aasee (lake), the mensa(canteen), the wurst stall we all attacked, so on and so forth.

the best thing about the trip was that i got to meet my host once again!!! they had actually planned for a trip and had told me that they won't be there. i decided to go to their place to drop them a letter and take a look at their house once again. To my surprise, someone was in!!! i rang the doorbell and Kathrin, their youngest daughter was there!!! It turned out that Elke, her mother, had an operation and they had to cancel their trip.

It was wonderful meeting them once again. Elke brought be back to the room i slept in last year. my goodness.. so much memories of the wonderful 3 weeks i had there. i'm going to make sure i do not lose contact with them this time round.


Despite it being a short stay with xiaowen's hosts, Herr and Frau Sagemann, i could feel that they treated us like their daughters. i felt so taken care of. it was a very warm-hearted weekend trip.

and so, Xiaowen and i bidded farewell in Münster. she made her way back to Grenoble and i'm now back in Konstanz. It was a tiring 11.5 hour train journey. worth it nevertheless... the only thing is that, i think i had abit too much chocolates and drank too little water. i had sore throat yesterday, and i've been sniffing away the whole of today. i shall go pop a flu tablet and zzzzz. pics that i took at münster are with xiaowen. i'll post them up when i get them later...

oh yeah. one funny thing happened today. yesterday i bought bread and got them squashed in one corner. then when i wanted to eat it just now, i realised that the bread was in perfect form again! hahaha. i donno wat happened. i only know that i've never seen bread expand back to their normal shape before... weird. but interesting. hahaha... to think i was irritated with myself for squashing the bread yesterday cos i really dislike eating squashed bread. now i have nice ones again!

okey!! may i become better. goodbye for now!